Sunday, February 23, 2014

KILL THE MARKETERS

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you."
--Bill Hicks

The other day, I was catching up on the phone with a young friend. "Get this!" I told him. "Catholic Relief Services has invited me to apply for a grant to travel with them!" "You?" he blurted. "Why would they want youto go?"

15 comments:

Still, there is something very funny and also very real here about how the ONLY good, true, useful thing about us is Christ...and that if you follow Him with a sincere heart, no matter how lackluster, conflicted, wounded, and ineffective you may feel, and be, in your personal and/or professional life, He will unerringly lead you exactly where He needs you.

Which is more or less where you want to be, too, turns out--though you're never quite sure.

Bravo. You know why I would like to talk w/ you in person? Because, you would be 'in person'. You would not be 'in image' or 'in facade.' You are who you are who you are and that allows Jesus to be seen. Wearing masks is exhausting. I get exhausted around people who have on a mask - I get spent when I am throwing on mask after mask. But when I am unvarnished me, I have energy galore. When I listen (either via the written word or spoken word) to another who is unvarnished I am refreshed and called higher. I cannot imagine that you don't have skads to say. Keep talkin' and writing!!!

Sorry if this is a duplicate, but think I lost my post in never, never land...and cannot even remember what I wrote just a few minutes ago.....Anyway, I get exhausted when I am being fake or when someone else has on a mask(s)...but am energized by someone, such as yourself, who just 'IS'--you are who are, who you are. Then I see and hear Jesus - then I see and feel hope. I cannot fathom why an organization WOULDN"T want you to speak (well, I can as most of us still don't want reality)...am thankful for your journey and thankful that I am included in it simply by reading your books, etc. Carry on!

YES. I am going through this right now as per a new year's resolution to "put myself out there" as an artist (in the hope of cutting back on my day job as a freelance copywriter IN ADVERTISING). Categorization comes AFTER existence. We are our messy selves, not just in a bad way. We can't really categorize ourselves because categories are tools and we're higher than the tools we use. I envy the dead artists whose every drawing on the back of a grocery receipt seems shot through with mystical importance. But we who are alive have to work to make ourselves intelligible without cutting out our own hearts.

Oh it is enough to make a person tear out his or her hair--the CONSTANT scrabbling for money while 1) desperately trying to carve out the time/protect your heart enough to write, paint, etc. 2) desperately trying not to despise/resent your employer(s) and 3) desperately aware in my case anyway, of my craving for attention, professional jealousy, craven phoniness, willingness to compromise etc.

Andrey Tarkovsky's Sculpting in Time is a bracing jolt re vision, creativity, and the life, lot and call of the artist. He says we're under obedience. We have to do what we do, as a matter of life and death, because we've been called. Kierkegaard: "We come into this world with sealed orders"....

With all that, my years as a lawyer, much as I agonized during them, in some ways have stood me in good stead. They enabled me to save a nest egg that made me feel safe enough (living at poverty level, but still) to serve a decade-long apprenticeship. They taught me (mostly horrifying) things I didn't know about the world and about myself (ditto), but in their way, that knowledge has stood me in good stead, too. All things work toward God for those who love Him or however that goes. I feel sure God is every bit as moved, gripped, mystified, and delighted by a beautiful painting or poem or piece of music as we are...and I also feel sure he cracks up, like we do, at a genius comedian. Here's the Bill Hicks Kill the Marketers clip, in case you haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo#t=120

Well I like the un-canned nature of your writing. I read several blogs, not religiously but regularly and often times I will read a paragraph and think to myself "what the hell did he just say?" and have to go back and read it several more times just to understand something as simple as "I went to the store yesterday and bought a can of green beans." Some try too hard to be clever. I prefer writers/speakers who write/speak in a precise manner, not boring, not trite, not obscure, basically not "canned"; I guess just honest and you write that way. I think C.S. Lewis gave advice to a budding writer once and said something like, one should always prefer a simple direct word to the long, vague word. Also I think it's great that you haven't pigeon-holed yourself because no one is really, or should be, one dimensional as in, I'm a convert. I'm a mother. I'm an enabler. I'm a gardener. I'm a nurse. I'm a dreamer. I'm a jerk! We are all these things at once and are forever changing, hopefully. So yeah, carry on!

Heather, just saw that you will be speaking at the Catholic Press Association conference this summer. Wish I could go this year. Instead, I'll likely be on a pilgrimage to visit Flannery O'Connor's home. :) I'm sure you'll do an awesome job! I think I've said this before but your honesty is refreshing.

MARIA CALLAS

RING LARDNER

BETTY MacDONALD

LOUISE NEVELSON

"I feel that what people call by the word ‘scavenger’ is really a resurrection."

SVIATOSLAV RICHTER

"During one period of chronic depression, it was impossible for me to live without a plastic lobster that I took with me everywhere."

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

"The world will be saved by beauty."

THE BROTHERS QUAY

"It's that little glint, that privileged look into a keyhole, and realizing suddenly that there's this little universe that's probably suffering and barely breathing, but it's pulsating, vibrating, with its own life. That in itself is a metaphor of the universe."

THE KING: "MAN, I REALLY LIKE VEGAS."

Jesus statue found in Elvis's bedroom at Graceland. Photo by H. King.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers."

ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

"If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter."

BILL MONROE

"Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world."

BILL W.

"We'll make it not because we're a better people--but because we're a weaker people."

BILL HICKS

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you."

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